


What Leads to Dancing

by the_demi_modest



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (sort of), But mostly angst, But with a happy ending, Canonical Character Death, Demiromantic, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Grace - Freeform, I don't know I just type these things, I hope this makes someone feel better the way it did me, Other, my first post on ao3 hope I don't mess up, rare pairings I think, some autoeroticism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 22:55:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21381955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_demi_modest/pseuds/the_demi_modest
Summary: “But how?”“Pop off on the way home from something—”“I mean, how would I evendoit?”"Micah" has been professional about her visits to hell for nearly a thousand years, but a desperate question leads her and her tour guide to surprisingly satisfying common ground.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Ligur/Michael (Good Omens)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 13





	What Leads to Dancing

(1)

_Mi zot ha'nishkafah, k'mo shachar? Lo yada'ti_

_*_

To say “it all” started that night would be a mistake. “It all” had started quite some time ago, before him and the prince, before anything really. “It all” had started and it had also been decided. The two sides, one evil, one good. The great war for mortal souls. How it ended had been decided too: A final battle, a Big One right at the end, to decide which side won. 

But something had started that night. And here is how it happened.

*

Close to the end of heaven’s monthly tour of hell, Li realized by the rowdy music and tasteless flashing lights that the demons had brought back disco—again. 

Li was, of course, disinvited from any disco party, having ignored enough previous invitations in favor of his duties lurking. He didn’t know if the prince was avoiding any frivolity of her own. Those weren’t the kind of questions you just asked. 

She called herself Micah here. _ Just like one of them _, Li had thought the first time hearing it, and he’d said so. Afraid to smudge a holy name down in the sulfur pits? Leaving it at the door?

A demon could be a demon anywhere, her highness had told him primly. If the urge took him, Li could walk up to heaven and write rude words on its outermost wall with his own urine. No one would think twice about why. He was a demon. But higher beings had to have standards.

And secrets. He hadn’t known the half of them, even when he’d been on the good list.

It would be important, he thought in the days after, if anyone demanded an explanation, if he had no choice but to give it, that he have a defense ready—for heaven or hell. He chose this excuse: The mind works first in binaries. Heaven and hell insisted. So inadvertently, Li’s duty as prince-escort had set him apart in his mind from the others. Learning that other princes from Up There had passed on these visits, Micah’s duty as escorted prince had set _ her _ apart as well. Outwardly, they kept up the show of opposite sides, but inwardly this new binary, the involved and the uninvolved, got him thinking of them as their own side—just until the end of the world, of course, until the Big One. He wouldn’t plead not guilty. (They wouldn’t care about the evidence.) But he’d say it hadn’t been meant to be more than that. Not until that night.

Until that night he’d avoided exposing her to disco.

The office was rendered useless that evening, all its desks piled to the walls, all the cubicles folded and stuffed into a corner. Tiles had been laid down and locked into a dance floor. The tiles blinked infernal shades of neon. The whole thing should have looked cheery but somehow managed to look more miserable for the brightness. They were in any case soon hidden by the pack of bodies pulsing between the floor and a large faceted mirror ball. The ball hung from the catwalk above and that catwalk, at times like these, was the only safe way across the room. 

Li walked quickly, used to her following, letting his steps fall heavy out of sync from the music to emphasize how uninvolved they were to be. Even if he couldn’t hide disco, he could spare her holy senses some embarrassment. Between heaven and hell, he shouldn’t have cared, but it was a matter of pride: _ You don’t need this. I don’t either. _

And about halfway along the catwalk, he realized his footsteps beat out alone.

He went back to find her.

So it started on the catwalk that night, in the shadows.

* * *

(2)

_Ani l'dodi v'ala t'shokato. _

*

Especially in hell, it was hard to hide one of _ them _. They had a way of standing, a way of looking at things that were beneath them (as so many things were) unfazed. Everything said they were different from you. They were so calm, because they were so powerful.

There was no judgment in her eyes. Not off the clock. But there was something guarded that, nevertheless, fixedly watched the proceedings below; and while Li had had an excuse ready to hurry her along, it died on his lips when he saw this attention. He waited.

“You call that… dancing?” she said quietly. Li hadn’t given a sign they whisper, but she picked up on things, like how he’d stood silently rather than calling out. Back channels meant assuming one needs be discreet. They were good at discretion.

Again, Li followed the path of her eyes down to the floor. He was a poor whisperer. His voice was too deep; he had to let it roll in his throat so it wouldn’t carry. “Didn’t used to,” he said. “Low standards, perhaps, but really, they’re just bad at it.”

“At disco?”

“Not just disco. Even the waltz. Mortals have called that wicked too, so of course we had to try it. They say dancers are possessed.”

“I heard a waltz is supposed to be romantic, whatever it is.”

Not for the first time since these meetings began, circa A.D. something or other, Li wondered about _ intent _. Maybe it was the tedium of a thousand years, but he couldn’t help wonder why certain matters came up in their conversation, or why conversation happened at all, outside of business matters.

_ You wouldn’t tell your friends Up There you’d even heard of a waltz _ , he thought. _ Why would you tell me? _

And it was only him. No one else would talk to _ their _ kind, not if the matter could be helped. Both sides preferred swords or the tally-ups of souls to communication. They probably would keep preferring those, right up until the Big One to end it all.

She hadn’t moved, and so Li discreetly assumed the question of dancing was still on topic. He tried to think of something else. “Somewhere along the line,” he said, “the humans were more against dancing than sex.”

“Was that one of ours or one of yours?”

“Ours,” Li claimed, though he couldn’t remember. “They were so worried about dancing leading to sex, see, but we’d gotten them so afraid of sex they didn’t know how to talk about that part. So they fought dancing more than they did the other thing. Measured distance between couples with six inches and a Bible. ‘Must avoid sex, as it might lead to dancing.’ That’s how the joke goes.” He cleared his throat. “But we keep it the first way around.”

“I can see that.”

The disco was degenerating into what it usually did and into what he’d hoped haste would avoid her seeing. Demons would dance on the head of a pin or anywhere else if it suited them, at midnight or at midday, at solstice or sock-hop. And the same was true of other things heaven’s associates wouldn’t do.

Micah was still watching the dancefloor, or rather what was seething and panting on it by now with its own primeval music.

Li didn’t want to seem interested, so he watched her. Despite all the renovations over its years in the damnation business, hell was by aesthetic a filthy iron stinkhole bleeding blue and green brimstone from its seams. There was no reason to watch anything but her, softly glowing from halo to hem. Those lily skirt robes held a light that shunned the muck and the mirk. It repelled the clouds of flies and gnats that got everywhere else. Nothing of hell clung to her. It was too afraid.

So much of his energy was spent on not thinking about why she might be staring, that his mouth went off without him. “Sex is easier than dancing, so I hear,” he said. That stole her eyes.

She said, “You mean, you’ve never…?”

“Temptation’s the job. Some demons are hands on, but, no, I never.” He had gotten used to sounding proud of it, because it was better than feeling odd. “Guess we have that much in common.”

“Our rules about sex only apply to our kind’s interaction with mortals.” 

He was surprised, but kept his voice grounded. “You know, I was wondering on that. Our King said much the same. Said we’re not allowed demiurges. Just the one at the end, and that’ll be his.”

“Our King already has Hers.”

“Getting a head start then?”

“And it wasn’t however you’re imagining it.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You’re a demon. Why wouldn’t you?”

“Doesn’t interest me. Guess we don’t have that in common.”

“Sex is not disallowed in heaven.” She added, as if to be honest, “It just doesn’t happen.”

“You mean you…”

“Never.” Her eyes darted away and fixed again on the crowd. Her hand had gone tight on the catwalk rail. Even in the dark it was delicate and pale. Hard to believe it could raise a sword and smite a third of heaven’s personnel from the sky, unless you’d been there, and Li had been, all the way down.

She said, “Can’t hear yourself think above the noise, can you?”

“I’ll see you out.”

“There was something I wanted to ask you. Is there someplace private we can talk? Away from that?” Micah’s gaze flicked sideways to him one more time, just a moment, just a flash of sapphire. 

Li was trained to tempt humans, trained to spot the little ticks and nuances that meant they were bolstering a second wind of virtue, or otherwise starting to crack. But he told himself he was imagining things when he thought those dark pupils looked a bit… wide. Must be the dark, he told himself. Flesh is flesh. It’s just a reflex.

His mouth ran away with him again, the rest of him busy holding still. “Yeah. I know a place.”

* * *

_ Angels and demons aren’t real. They are constructs built on imagination, on folk memory of certain events, on a desire for permanence, on a primal, childlike need, the feeling that one must be seen to exist. _

_ Angels and demons are real. They are terrifying beings beyond mortal comprehension. The terror of the angel is in their beauty, for no mortal can look upon them and not be completely lost to the sublime radiance. The terror of the demon is likewise their hideous strength, laying bare the truth that no mortal ken can encompass such capacity for destruction. In either instance, to know eternity is to lose the self. _

_ This is a story about neither fake nor real angels and demons. _

_ In this story, there are people. _

* * *

Hell’s mansions are lonely but luxurious places, a middle finger to heaven’s bare austerity. There is only one bed in each chamber, but a comfortable one. Whatever else is needed is wished in and out of existence through miracles. Each door locks with its demon’s name and won’t open if they aren’t home. Even the shutters to the balconies have lockbars. Li kept his room lit with iron wrought lamps holding gold-red firelight.

He said, “We won’t be bothered here.”

Micah looked like she was considering being offended. It was a look Li had seen often enough to know it at a glance. (He knew hypocrisy at a glance too. It was this prince not any other who had recommissioned the Fallen as soulkeepers of the damned; the rest would have had them locked away.) Micah had often asked Li to explain the torments of purgatory with that look. It was almost a game.

Li pointedly ignored his unmade bed. He unbarred the shutters and pushed open the doors onto the balcony, welcoming in the eternal night. A cool wind, fresh from the void and touched with brimstone, made the heavy velvet drapes sway. The drapes were blood red, layered with lighter curtains of pilfered gold. Ligur liked red and black best.

The view was an abyss, at the bottom of which lay the damnation of souls. Now and then these lights dropped like falling stars from above, and vanished somewhere down below like dying sparks. 

Returning to the room, Li peeled his pet lizard off his head and set it on an old dry log he kept around for the purpose. The log produced as many crickets as the lizard wished to eat, all of them conveniently lame. He asked, “Doesn’t suit you, O prince?”

Micah still stood in the place where she’d stopped. “Were you misunderstanding me?”

“No. When I said I wasn’t interested, I meant it.” Li peeled off his jacket next and draped it on a rack that appeared as needed in a corner. Even without the coat he was broad-shouldered and thick-limbed. No one outside this room would even know he liked nice things from how he could stand as stern as a rock and talk like a grave. He pushed up his sleeves and explained, “We demons are very private. Here’s the only place no one’ll ask questions about why you’re still here, because no one will know.” He pushed his stubby fingers through the matted curls of his hair. “It’s even soundproof, but for out here…”

He left her for the balcony and pretended to admire the pitch black view. In truth he was feeling spoiled. The other demons would kill him more than once, more than a hundred times, if they knew he didn’t mind her light.

“It’s not what we’re used to,” Micah said at last. 

“And what’s that?” 

“We nest mostly,” Micah explained. “Together, when we sleep at all. We share dreams.”

“Like disco without the fun?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Can’t recall,” Li fibbed. “So what is your question?”

“It’s about… that thing that neither of us are interested in.”

She’d had no trouble with the word before. 

He glanced back, saw her pinching her fingers together like one working at a knot of thread. “Oh?”

“I don’t think we have that in common.”

“If it offends your virtuous senses, have it how you like.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I’m still waiting for the question.”

“I’m not interested in sex with anyone.”

“You said that.”

“I’m saying, I _ am _interested in sex.”

Li turned completely back around. He couldn’t help it. 

Her fingers gave up the imaginary knot and she shook her head. “This body, it wants things. But it doesn’t want…”

Li made a gesture suggesting the dancefloor in the basement. She nodded.

“Yes.”

“Must be a mood,” he said. It was a lie, but he didn’t like her so distressed.

“A forever one, I suppose.”

“Forever?”

“Since we stopped looking like forces of nature and were to appear as humans… And I can’t will it away and I can’t stop it. I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Can’t one of your friends up there help?”

The knot came back, this time not in patient nails but clawed fingers that might tear something apart given the chance. “I don’t want them to.”

Li relaxed a little despite himself. Here was familiar territory. “Just do what I do here.”

She bristled.

“Not a demon thing,” he added. “Mortals do it too. You just…” How did one put this delicately? “You just handle it yourself.”

“I don’t understand.” The amount of clenching teeth in the admission was impressive. She was serious then? She was levelling with him? 

“I mean, you handle it yourself. You handle _ yourself _.”

The hands went still. She stood rigid.

“You must have seen humans do it, in all these hundreds of years…”

“We’re not allowed to watch that.” Then she added, quieter, “On purpose.”

“You have?”

“On accident. All the times. I’m… I’ve never liked the idea of being there without them knowing, so I leave. I’m the only one who leaves.”

He resisted the urge to unpack that statement and asked, “Then why’s it bother you?”

“I just told you…”

Li bit off his next remark as she trailed off. He took a moment to quash his curiosity so it wouldn’t bungle this up with questions (as he had back in the day before gravity won against a pair of shredded wings). This was _ fascinating _. 

He turned away again, pretended the falling stars were just falling stars tonight. A bit of the beauty he’d lost long ago was standing in his room telling him (but not knowing she was telling him) that they were _ alike _. And it was a prince no less. And Li surprised himself. It was like a bridge or a mirror, a place where opposites met, where they didn’t clash but joined. He felt more than a connection. He felt affection.

And it scared him.

He wanted to say something. Say it would be fine. He was fine. (Well, not really, but it was nice to say most days.) Give a few tips. Then a “by your leave” and walk her out. Be a gentleman and see her right up to the surface, so she knew he thought no less of her.

“It’s not hard,” he said. “I do it at time.”

“You?”

“I said I’m not interested, I know. But I’m just not interested in the bit where other people help so…”

“Alone?”

“At least I know _ my _ hands aren’t holding a knife.”

“But down there…”

“Oh, they were just getting started,” said Li. He knew at that very moment the Lord of the Flies was likely unsheathing a favored blade. “They’ll kill each other for fun next. Take trophies. Bloody load of paperwork in the morning, so many getting discorporated. They give in, see, but then they hate that anyone saw them, and they take revenge. That way no one feels privileged.”

“So they don’t like it?”

“No, they like it. That’s what’s messed up, it is.”

Her jaw dropped and he realized his mouth had gone off again.

“Bad manners, sorry,” he coughed into his hand. “Not good for solidarity, complaining about peers to the other side.”

“It’s fine!” she said quickly, then, as if regretting the outburst repeated more calmly, “It’s fine. No, I hadn’t thought about that, I’m sorry. It must be different.”

“Anyway, when I say I’m not interested, I guess it’s a bit like you, although…” This time he managed to clamp his mouth shut in time. Stupid. It _ would _ take a thousand years for him to almost say something this stupid. Desperation, that’s what it was. He’d be caught by his own next, admiring stars and sunlight and, yes, her, if they looked close enough.

“I assume,” he restarted, “seeing as you’re all close all the time, it’d be like shagging a brother or something if you got their help.”

“I don’t want their help. I just want… I don’t know.” She avoided his eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”

“You just find a corner and…”

“There are no corners. No privacy, not up there.”

“Somewhere on earth then?”

“They’d ask where I’d been. There are watchers to worry about.”

“You really can’t lie?”

She looked uncomfortable. It was a stupid question. Of course she could lie. The point was she wouldn’t. Their sort didn’t. He apologized quickly, stepping on the bridge despite himself.

“I mean, you can make something up—not falsely. You can arrange convenient truths.”

“But how?”

“Pop off on the way home from something—”

“I mean, how would I even _ do _ it?”

It threw off his false calm. She looked at him, an act that let him see the desperation, the worry in her eyes. And also pupils wide-blown despite the firelight.

_ Can’t let you walk out of here like that _ , he thought. _ They’d know. Hell’s bells, they would if they watch the humans enough. I have to help now. _

It wasn’t hard to have a treacherous thought like that, not after he’d admitted he liked how she looked. 

_But you’re not quite like me_. He insisted this to himself. He didn’t know. But wasn’t it the right thing, to take a step back? To only counter-offer what had been offered? Keep things even, fair? More than that was intrusive. _You’re not like me._ _You weren’t allowed to figure it out. _

There was that bridge again, daring him to take another step forward.

He left the balcony and shut its doors, just for the moment. He left the bar undone. “Uh, like I said, hands, mostly. Bit of… Well, you figure out what you like.”

She hadn’t moved.

_ Doesn’t even know where to start _?

“Uh,” he said again, because a show of uncertainty might help level the field, put her at ease. “May I take your hand a moment, your… highness?”

“You said it wasn’t…”

“I’m not going to touch you. I mean, besides the… I’ll just… just for a moment.”

For most humans, wanting one another was the default, but Li had been such an excellent tempter because he knew the truth. At the heart of it, arousal had nothing to do with anything but yourself. So he offered his hand, did not reach to take or touch hers, only waited. He’d realized the instant he’d asked how this very idea was shaking his insides. It wasn’t sexual, holding hands. But if it was her hand, well, it was still… intimate. 

He added, to push this thought away and to assure her, “Just to show you. For when you’re on your own.”

She hesitated, and, damn him, it was terrifying, how hope and fear carved out his insides while she waited. At last her long fingers slid into his rough palm. _ Too rough for something so fine _, he thought, and he fought the urge to flinch in sympathy though she didn’t flinch at all. 

“Just, maybe, here to start,” he explained, gently pushing the hand back to her chest. He lay it down across her breast. Without his asking, when he reached again she gave her other hand. He looked away for her sake as he placed this lower, then immediately took his hands away. “Then you just go from there. Anything can be a’right.”

“I see.” She didn’t move her hands for a moment, then let them fall, and turned away. End of the conversation then, Li thought. Time to leave. All this talk was making him hard despite himself. He’d have to deal with it later. In a way, he felt something of a burden lift, knowing someone else might understand, even a little—

Her voice was so small he nearly missed it.

“What about if I do it here?”

Shocked, he blurted out. “I said I wasn’t…”

“Not with you. Just, here. Here is safe, isn’t it?”

He couldn’t see her face. They didn’t lie. Was this a test? An arrangement of convenient truths? This was hell. Hell, safe? What a place to find safety in… 

He said, “I can’t leave you here alone. It’s how the lock works.”

“It’s soundproof, you said, so maybe…”

“But for out here.” He put his hand on the balcony door. Maybe it was the unbelievableness of the whole thing that helped him calm down again. 

Her hands worked at something, and then the lily white robe slid off her shoulders. She was like ivory underneath. The glow wasn’t just the clothes but the skin itself. He could just make out her wings tucked away in the other dimension where all was iridescence.

“Micah…” But any attempt at anger failed.

She pulled a gold pin from her hair. The hair fell down her back like fire water. “Please. I’ve… nowhere else.”

“Are you trying to tempt me?”

“I said I don’t like sex with others. Demons are certainly others. If anyone’s tempted anyone, who’s tempted me with this place?”

The robe slid into a bright pile on the floor. 

Li fixed his eyes on it. He was conditioned to think there was no one like him, so for an instant he wondered if heaven would tempt a demon for a lark, laying bets. Well, it wasn’t going to work, not unless the lure was to stare at her…

But Li had a soul too, like any person did. The bridge was holding sure there, saying the confession was true. There might be more to it, but it was a hard thing, that was all, not deception, just something difficult. It was desperate or brave to face something like that. Or a bit of both.

“Just a moment then,” Li said, and he let the bridge hold. He tore his eyes away and walked to the bed, waved a hand to clean it up, tuck the corners. Then on a thought he gestured again and changed the sheets.

“What’s this about?”

“To make you comfortable,” he said, not looking—deliberately not looking—at her. He ran a hand across the duvet and it turned from fur to satin and quilted down. He turned back the sheets and willed silk for cotton. It shone in the firelight, nearly as bright as her.

He snapped his fingers and a record player in the corner appeared and dropped a needle on a George Benzen vinyl. Not for mood, though he’d let her think so. Music was the next best thing to a soundproof balcony.

She was tying little knots with her fingertips again, lovely as a nervous dawn. “How long does it take?”

“As long as you need. You tell them I kept you late. Not a lie.” He walked quickly to the balcony, pushed open the door. “I’ll be out here. You just do what you have to. I mean, I know what it’s like. Can’t imagine having to wait this long… I mean, we’re the same, I guess. If you need me, just…”

He couldn’t finish, but stepped out onto the balcony and shut the door. He backed away from it, leaned on the railing as far from it as possible, tried to let the saxophone drown out even his thoughts.

Dammit, he wished he were alone. It wasn’t like he couldn’t jerk off right there, but that would be intrusive, to go about his business while someone was there who didn’t want to be a part of it, who wouldn’t feel _ right _about it. Demons aren’t allowed to have qualms, but it helped that no other demon in hell knew about this to have a qualm about it. 

The quiet stretched on the other side, just a creak of bed springs and that was all. Could be an act. Could all be an act. Would it matter if the bridge wasn’t real?

Did it matter that he hoped it was?

Li let the cool wind of the abyss cross his skin, held the wrought iron rail, played his fingers along its pebbled black facets, distracting his senses, trying to calm down. It wasn’t her fault he’d gotten hard talking about it. Natural thing, really. Just had to take a moment, let it go.

He’d almost managed when he caught an earful from the room above the music. He let his fingers curl around the iron and gripped the railing as a way of pinning his hands. It was his bed, after all. He knew how the springs wound and gave. And he knew the moans, had wrapped them in his own voice. He felt one hand drop from the rail, rallied his nerve and put it back. He chastised himself: He’d brought her here and she’d had nowhere else to go. Taking pleasure in what wasn’t his would be…wrong.

Li hadn’t until that moment known he believed there were wrongs even a demon should never try. Light was a teacher that way. It threw shadows, taught shapes. And he’d never seen them thrown this way, so he’d never learned until now. 

Yes, Li had tempted mortals, but he’d never gotten off on it. He’d never wanted to. So why did he feel tempted this time around? It didn’t make sense with the other feeling of never wanting to touch anyone. And what was tempting him? He didn’t want to touch her now. Just… himself.

She was getting lost in it, getting loud, harder to ignore between strains of brass. Li’s knuckles paled as the iron bit his palms. Think of something. Something _ else _. 

What about after? Would she be alright? When Li had realized the truth, he’d been ecstatic, the closest a demon could come to joy. He’d almost wanted to tell someone, but he’d known the danger, and that had plunged him into misery for weeks. Admissions were weaknesses. Weaknesses were secrets to be used against you. And yet the admission had come so easily with her.

If she was embarrassed, what should he say?

A chill shot up his spine and heat clenched his stomach as she climaxed, the cry shrill, then falling to gasping. He waited in the quiet after as the needle on the record found the next track. He knew how first times went. He wouldn’t intrude, not if she wasn’t done trying. 

The affection was more terrifying than the want.

He wanted to go back in and ask, _ “How was it?” _ He swallowed in his dry throat again. No, that also felt wrong _ . _

“Li?” It was breathless. Made sense. He was catching his own.

Li bit his tongue against any other thoughts. “Yeah?” he called through the door, a bit late. _ What if she thinks I’m a pervert? _ She already did, but it was different when it was personal, always different that way.

No answer at first. 

Maybe now she’d leave. He’d show her out as planned. He’d need to clean the sheets. Easy enough with a miracle. Maybe change them back to black. The white only looked lovely on her… 

“Li, I need you.”

He pushed open the door with the full intention of throwing his gaze elsewhere. He had the corner of the ceiling already picked out.

“I told you,” he started to say. “I’m not…”

He forgot the corner. 

“Micah?”

Her hair was splayed like a sunset across the pillows. She lay gasping at the ceiling, all the curves and bends of her spread out like a landscape, shining. One hand hung limp on her thigh, all a shining mess, and she’d placed one bare foot on the floor. It was an old wives’ tale whispered among peasants, long ago: Sleep with your foot on the floor and a devil will come to your bed. Li’s stolen stare ended its line there. He’d lost his breath all the while.

“What could you need me for?” he asked at last.

She turned her back to him but didn’t leave the bed. “Is it always like this?”

A measure of music passed uninterrupted between them.

“After six thousand years of waiting? I wouldn’t know.” Maybe she was only sparing him embarrassment. “It gets… I don’t want to say easier. But you get to know yourself more. You try new things. Sometimes they work.”

“How do mortals handle it?”

“Some don’t,” Li admitted. “Some need each other for it. Some don’t like it at all.”

“I thought I was like that, at first,” Micah admitted. “Then I saw… But I didn’t think we were supposed to do what they did.”

“When they’ve all but defined our image?”

“I suppose it was easy to think so. Easier than finding out about this.” 

Her hand drifted. Again, he tried not to look at it, but his eyes fell on her clothes instead, shining on his floor. She’d put them back on soon enough, he assured himself. _ No one else will know what’s underneath but us. _

There was something in that knowledge that felt, for lack of a better word, sacred. But it didn’t belong to heaven or hell. It felt like it belonged only to someone like him who knew how much that meant. It fed the affection: _ She let you see that, hear that. Don’t break that trust. _

“Do you, um, need more time?”

“Thank you,” she said, but didn’t look at him or leave the bed. Was that a yes then?

_ Please go _ , Li thought. He turned away and shut his eyes, pretended to check the lizard sleeping off too many crickets. _ Now you’ve left me wanting and I need to take care of this. It’s not like we’ll speak of it again. I’m a demon. How can I explain what even _ I _ don’t understand? _

He said none of this out loud. He would not have dreamed to, even with his mouth a broken trap all night. He had a cork in the bottle. The finger in the dam. It stopped him from saying, _ How can I ask you to stay? _

“Li?”

“You’re welcome,” he said quickly, his heart racing at all his ridiculous thoughts. “Really, it’s…” He’d almost said his pleasure. But, no, that wasn’t right. Almost a confession that. “It’s fine. I’m sure you have business to attend to elsewhere.”

She put a hand to her hair, started searching for the pin. “How is it for you?”

“How’s what?”

“When you do this?”

“About the same, I’d guess.”

“The body’s different.”

“Principle’s the same. Were you thinking of applying for a different model?”

She only shook her head, looking distressed. He tried to look around for the hairpin as well. A show of solidarity. 

“I’m not ready to go back tonight.”

“It’s your business.”

“Do you know a place?”

“A place for what? Dancing?”

It was a joke, but she looked curious. “I thought you didn’t dance?”

“Well. And that was… Well, don’t tell anyone, but I was so bad at it, I took lessons.”

“How?”

“From a human.”

Her hair started to tumble again. Remembering herself, she hurried to curl it up, searched the floor, stooped like some painting from Florence of a woman at the bath. Did she even know how heartbreakingly beautiful she was? 

She said, “I’ve never liked disco.”

“Me neither. I learned the waltz.” _ Why am I telling you this? _

Li spotted the pin as she did. They both reached for it, crossed fingers on the floor. Li froze, a word that made little sense compared to how his heart pounded. It were better to say he burst into flame.

“Was it the six inches and a Bible kind?” she asked. Her voice was small again.

“No. It was definitely the kind that sex leads to.”

She was blushing furiously. “I’m only curious. I’m…They’re nesting tonight,” she spilled a confession. “I’m stalling, you know.”

“I suppose you might smite me if I let you fall asleep here.”

“I don’t want to sleep.” Her hand didn’t move. He didn’t take his away. She wrapped his rough fingers in hers, left the pin and stood them up. “How’s it for you?”

“The waltz?”

“No. When you do this.”

Here Li’s testimony before any judge would become muddled. He wouldn’t be able to say he _ decided _. That would imply thinking. He would have to say he’d let her help him undress, let her lie him down. He’d know that she’d guided his hands to where she thought he might prefer like he had hers (that she had been right, but he wouldn’t tell that. It was too intimate a detail). He would have to say she’d let go at that point, gone away somewhere, and that at that point he had shut his eyes and given in, past caring where he was, only that she was there, somewhere, close. 

And why? Who knew? Not heaven or hell, not in the least. He wouldn’t tell them how long it took. Time had been his furthest concern. He’d arched his back and tightened his stomach as he cried out over the last strains, and he’d come down to the mess of himself and a rush of breath. That was all he knew.

He heard her panting. The bed was wide enough. She’d lain herself out again and finished when he did. His mind was in such a daze he couldn’t think past the fact.

He caught himself muttering not a curse but a line of a poem. His hand on his mouth couldn’t catch the words before they were out. “_ Hineh, has'tav avar _ .” _ Behold, the winter is past. _

“It certainly feels that way,” she sighed. Her eyes were on the ceiling. She was as radiant as sunbright dew. But more than that, she was radiant in her impossibility, as bright and impossible as a unicorn after the Deluge or as grace for a demon. 

She said, “I’m sorry. You must hate me now.” She rolled off the bed but he crawled after her. She reached for her clothes and he caught her arm gently to stop her flight.

“Don’t.”

Anywhere else, anyone else, he might have exalted in one of the enemy apologizing. But not with this. This was a different side of him, of her, a side of its own. He couldn’t stand her looking frightened about any of it. Or ashamed. Affection didn’t cover what he felt now. 

She turned her face up towards his and her blue eyes were sapphire again. They were, to his surprise, shedding tears. “But I can’t _ explain _ it.”

“I can,” he said, though it was only a wish, a helpless grasp at a straw. _ I’ve laid bare before you. Please let this be true. _“You… got off on that. On me.”

“I don’t know how,” she said, still out of breath, stammering. “I told you, I’m interested in sex.”

“But not with anyone.”

“Not _ sex _ with anyone,” she agreed. “But I hate the thought of being alone.”

“So it wasn’t a lie,” he said. “Just an ‘arrangement of convenient truths.’”

But she still blushed with shame. “I know it makes no sense. I can’t even understand...”

“Stop.” Li took her hand. “You can stop.” And like magic the flood of apology stopped. “It’s alright. It doesn’t have to make sense.”

She shut her eyes. He needed better words. He remembered shame. Had just had a refresher course. 

“I guess neither of us makes sense,” he said. “I mean, usually couples just fall asleep after, but…”

“Couples?”

“But you said you don’t want to sleep.”

She opened her eyes and he smiled, gave in to all the affection, just wanting to warm that fear away. He sat up, waved a hand at the record-player. The first record vanished back into the wishing space, replaced by another turning under the needle, something more modern, but slow. He took both her hands, helped her stand. 

An acoustic guitar plucked out soft strains in three-four time.

“Since you don’t want to go home, stay here,” he said. “I’ll teach you to waltz. May I?”

She nodded. “I didn’t bring a ruler.”

“We’re fresh out of Bibles down here.” 

They stood close. 

He showed her where to put her hands again. And that was how it began.

* * *

(3)

_Dodi li v'ani lo. _

*

The way it went on after was for awhile this way: She’d come for the tour, remark on hell’s methods, complain at times of meddling demon influence, as was expected of her. And there’d be the walk out, one that didn’t actually go out. They’d end back in his room, sometimes with music, sometimes without, together but apart, finding new ways to enjoy themselves and enjoying one another, in that way that made no sense outside those four walls. It didn’t always lead to dancing, but there was more of that, too, because they both liked the closeness of dancing after. Like sealing a bond of trust. 

And eventually there was a night she asked to sleep there. She’d looked worn out when she did.

“It’s just, I haven’t been,” she explained. “I know I might dream. If any of them were close by…”

“Say no more.”

She’d dreamed just what she feared, but it hadn’t been fearful there. They woke up smiling, which in hell is especially rare. 

*

And at one point, she’d said, “I don’t know if I can stand waiting a month anymore.”

With anything else, Li might have teased, but he couldn’t pull his mind upright to do so. Instead he was basking in her light, knowing the shadows would be worse with her gone. It was a kind of game they had, seeing if he could make her stay until just before dawn, have her running out the door minutes before the morning chorus, still fixing her hair. 

So he suggested, “We could get a place, in the middle ground.”

“They might see.”

“We could make an excuse to meet more often here then.”

There was one. A certain demon had been shifty lately, disappearing for weeks at a time to the mortal world with no explanation. The reports he sent back were full of boasting. Heaven had an angel sent to spy on him and that same angel was also gone for weeks. Micah took the job from her end and Li from his and they made excuses to their respective offices that they were spying, though some weeks they didn’t see the suspects at all. Micah took photographs and Li tapped phonecalls, and they soon discovered something interesting.

Micah caught up to the angel in a back alley behind a bookshop.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said.

None of heaven’s messengers were happy about a visit from a prince. Terror was the appropriate response. The wrongdoing angel looked around before whispering, in a squeaking, wide-eyed panic. “Your highness, what an honor. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You’re cohorts with a demon, and I’m going to prove it.”

“Oh, no, not at all,” he insisted. “It’s just with Armageddon coming, it seemed the right thing to do, keep an eye on things.”

“What?”

“You know, Armageddon.”

The word fell on her ears like a hammer.

*

“_ The _ Armageddon?”

“I got the memo today,” Li confirmed. “We’ve a delivery to make tomorrow. That demon’s apparently been getting a reputation. He’ll be in charge of getting the demiurge to his keepers, preparing him for his evil reign.”

“You can’t stop it?”

“Nothing can. Heaven will try.”

“In eleven years?”

“Yeah.” Li had turned over in bed and watched her watch the ceiling. Her hands were still playing along her own skin. They’d need another round at least after this news. Armageddon was the final battle. The Big One. The end. “You’ll have an excuse for more inspections.”

“Let’s get a place.”

“A place?”

“In the mortal world.”

“You didn’t want to before.”

“I’ve changed my mind. I want every moment with you I can have. And I want… I want to have a bit of the world with you, before it’s gone.”

Not for the first time, Li was reminded that her number of missions on earth had more than quadrupled as the End grew nigh. She’d had enough missions, enough chances to “pop off” somewhere and take care of things. But she’d chosen to be with him instead. Li took her hand and kissed her fingers, asked between pearly knuckles, “What will you tell your coworkers?”

“I’ll say I’m watching that demon. You say you’re watching that angel. It’ll be easy enough. There’s no stopping it, but it’d be only natural for us to zealously show an interest…”

“To arrange convenient truths?”

“Yes.”

And so the next evening Li went with a colleague to drop the infant off at a graveyard. No one asked where the child came from because no one wanted to know. Li played dumb (or rather indifferent) as his coworker complained about the demon chosen for the mission. Anyone else was more qualified, the tempter said. This one had gone too native. Li frowned and growled as if it were an atrocity, as if the privilege of starting the end were a prized jewel, as if he were not a demon who’d find better things to do than lurk.

“Damn, I’d give anything to be in his shoes,” muttered the duke beside him after the dropoff, lighting a cigarette that smelt of brimstone. “Were you at the thing last night?”

“No.”

“It was hell.” The scarecrow of a demon shrugged and sauntered off to make trouble. 

Li had the advantage of being a veteran of early temptations, before humans had been so self-aware. He could stand on reputation alone, come across as stoic and distant as a sign of commitment rather than disinterest. No one bothered that he waited a bit longer in the graveyard to watch the taillights shrink away. His thoughts were his own, and he’d damn himself doubly if he ever told any court in heaven or hell about them in that moment.

Li’s thoughts were that if both sides got along there would be no point to this game. No point to good, none to evil—those things would be but a human affair, because for humans those things had stakes. They were just the workday for immortals. 

Immortals aren’t supposed to question the way things are. Li did. Now more than ever. Had this moment of knowing the end was coming been worth the five thousand, eight hundred, and eighty-nine years without having Micah as he had her now? As they had each other?

It hadn’t been. And now there were only eleven years left.

* * *

(4)

_Zeh dodi v'zeh rei. _

*

Li and Micah found a flat above an antique shop. There were old vinyls there sold for two-pence, and now and then Li picked one up on his way in from the field. They played more songs, learned new dances, with chalk marks drawn out on the floor then washed away. The store owner thought it was sweet, the two lovers looking for a getaway from feuding families. She hoped they’d write a story someday. 

At times Li wondered something of the same, looking at charms and rings in glass cases in the shop, some older than the current dynasty. It was Micah who acted first, and Li was startled and moved all at once.

They still met monthly in hell. His room was still the safest place, odd as it was to think so with such an adorable romantic as a landlord on the middle ground. They’d overcome their mutual shyness about having their wings out. Micah frequently apologized for leaving feathers on the bed: Though it was easy enough to clean up the sheets with a miracle, immortal fluff was a bit more tenacious. Most days Li gathered it all into a bag and took it downstairs to drop into the hellfire pit, always with caution and even more regret.

That night he’d gotten the most of it into a drawstring bag, but Micah sat on the edge of the bed with her clothes in her lap, turning one smooth sprig of feather in her fingers while a few lame crickets eked out their swan songs. 

“Come here, Li.”

He would never just do as she said, of course. He knelt instead at her feet and put his head in her lap, just for the flush in her cheeks. At first, she couldn’t talk, then she pulled something gold from the bundle of clothes and flicked a catch so it opened.

“A locket?”

“Demons don’t mind human baubles, do they?”

“Pillages and plunderers we,” Li confirmed, curious.

“We’re not allowed possessions,” Michael admitted. She used a nail to lift a glass inside and pinned the bit of white feather beneath it. Even through this cover it shone a little. She closed the locket and unwrapped its chain from her hand. “Will you carry this?”

“Why?”

“I was thinking the other day, how Armageddon means ten million of us all fighting one another. I don’t want to fight you.”

“I won’t fight you.”

“Even so, we’ll be fighting. We don’t know which side will win. If anyone sees it, tell them it’s a trophy, something you won in a bet.”

“For what?’ Ligur asked, failing to feign disinterest. He handled the locket like it were a gem of primordial light, which in a way it was, just wrapped in matter now.

“Maybe that you got an angel to dance.”

*

The eleven years were nearly over when Micah had to return to heaven for war exercises. The crystal lake was turned to a parade ground, and a river of fire cut a warning line between it and the veil before the throne. Here she was Michael—and a “he” besides. As a prince, Michael was required to take up a crown and golden robes and approach the holy place in glorious apparel, shading “his” face humbly underwing. 

When receiving orders, she tried to think of nothing but that moment and how it would define everything, lest someone read her mind and learn where she’d been. She’d never thought it would be so easy, but fear was an astonishing motivator.

As the Presence passed by the ranks, she felt the eye of the Master of the universe on her, but then it turned away, leaving the burning memory of a message, without a word.

That night she told Li.

“There’s a boy somewhere who can do anything. That’s him, the demiurge.”

“I remember the delivery.” It had been a basket, not a bassinet, the way an orphan might be sent off. “He and the other one, they’re going to fight then?”

“Yes, but whatever the outcome, it’s a sham.”

“What is?”

“The war. When it’s over, the humans win or lose, but not us.”

“The Great Plan says…”

“The Plan says we fight and see who wins. It doesn’t say what happens after.”

Li frowned and gathered her in his arms. It had taken years to get to the point of sleeping close, a step up for trust after dream sharing. It was also a convenient turn-off when they needed to not be turned on, the better to think of how to keep these trysts going.

“What happens?” Li asked.

“It’s over.” Her voice was quiet. “Just… over. The end. We’re tools, Li. We won’t be useful anymore. There’s a river of fire up there.”

“Like the one down here?”

“Quicker. I’m told… I’m told it’ll be painless.”

He buried his face in her hair and for a long time neither of them could speak.

He said, “And that’s if Armageddon happens?”

“The other archangels know too. They don’t care.”

“Do they know how to stop it? Does anyone?”

“Someone might.”

*

Desperation could fuel the maddest plans.

“What do you know about Armageddon?”

The angel had been feeding ducks when she found him. He made a doubletake, the curls of his pale hair shifting, nearly standing on end.

“In a few days it starts, I suppose.”

“But it isn’t stoppable?”

“I’m afraid not. I mean, _ we’ve _ tried.”

He was looking around nervously and soon she gave up, but hid behind a bush when she saw the one who the angel was clearly waiting on.

So, they were in league after all.

It was, of course, necessary to report this, but she hated doing so. She made sure Li knew through back channels (they did always keep up the appearance of working professionals on public lines and in the public eye), and then went home to think it through.

That night she took the bed when he insisted. They locked the doors and turned the lights down low. Li watched from a chair, letting his eyes follow her fingers or the light’s flash in her pleasure-drunk eyes. He went off on his own easily, and sat himself down at her feet as she sat up, planting kisses on her knees as she patted his hair with a blushing smile. 

Later was a slow dance in candlelight with no flame as bright as her

“Less busy than a waltz,” Li had explained when he’d first shown her. Now he cradled her carefully against him, his callused hands never rough. She was warm and smooth and cool like silk. “Perfect for beginners, or when you’re too tired.” 

“Li, let’s run away.”

“Can’t. Hellhound’s found the boy. He’s ready. Stronger than any angel or demon now. Just a few days and the horsemen will appear. The plagues’ve already started.”

*

They made excuses to their coworkers, appearing at the office only long enough for assignments, putting off or ignoring completely anything hell and heaven couldn’t follow up on. Gabriel praised Micah’s espionage. Legion headed off to Megiddo. Li pretended to feed the hellhounds, but they’d be well-fed soon enough with the souls of the damned. Every moment to spare, Li and Micah locked themselves in. For talk or dance or their separate way of lovemaking. With the end—the End of all ends—approaching like an avalanche, there seemed no better way to be. There was a proverb for these days among the mortals: _ “Eat, drink, and be merry—for tomorrow we die.” _

“We could run away,” Micah said again, sometime after midnight as candles guttered low. One patch of shadow, then another, swallowed up a corner of the room. 

“Where?”

“The universe is enormous. We could find some dark place. Like this one.”

“She could find us anywhere. For the big reset.”

“We could run at least, steal more time.”

“When the trumpet blast sounds, where will you be?”

“Li, we have to go before that.”

“We can’t. They’ll follow. Where can I meet you?”

Before she could answer, a needle exploded in Li’s mind. He bit back a curse and clutched his temples.

“What is it?” Micah asked, alarmed.

“Direct orders,” Li explained, sitting up to bend over his knees and fight a dizzy spell. “They’re getting more frequent now that the end’s near. Not usually this late though.”

The pain faded and he found his breath, and a new set of instructions in his head, with an address.

“I’m needed in Mayfair,” he explained at last. “Tomorrow first thing. Let’s meet after that, whatever it is.”

“Tomorrow’s the last day.”

“I know.” He lay back down, gathered her in, let his voice go soft. “Don’t be seen, but don’t act out. Don’t let anyone know.”

“I won’t.”

“I don’t want to lose you, Micah.”

“You won’t lose me…”

The last candle went out and there was only her against the dark. 

“…not ’til I lose you.”

It wasn’t much better, but it was the best it could be.

* * *

(5)

_Ani l'dodi v'dodi li. _

*

Let’s talk about a memory. One you know you cannot keep. But you try. You hold it in your mind and in your body for as long as you can. Memory and fear. Fear, in the instant you find yourself distracted, find yourself thinking on something else, something inconsequential, something that doesn’t matter, because in that moment you’ve forgotten to map the details of what _ does _. 

Micah spent her days up to Armageddon drowning in memory and fear when she wasn’t with Li. If the escape failed, if they couldn’t get away, could she remember, in her last moments while some nameless demon’s sword halved her heart, well enough to be with him ’til the end?

Li never thought he looked anything special, though she had tried to tell him. He admired light and depreciated in passing the way his body looked in it. He was, even compared to other demons, dark, dark as the first humans, and had been even before the Fall. His was the living dark of the earth. Micah had smelled the newborn world after the first rain and fallen in love with it. There had been no warnings about loving the wrong thing back then. 

And still, no incense could capture that scent. Li still smelled of the rich, living odor of soil opened up to the rain, that soft cool place where life hides and thrives. The fall of his hair caught the same soft shadows as a primordial forest all extinct now. His body held the quiet, resting strength of cooling lava, warm and radiating. 

He loved light, he’d confessed at last, and she’d tried to explain, and failed because she was no poet, how she loved the dark. There was a light to him she also loved though. His eyes made her think of quiet coals, the warmth that holds back the desert chill despite uncaring stars. Micah looked at stars all the time up in heaven, but she’d never bothered to know them by name. Never thought to adore them. Never regretted harm done to them.

She spent that last night of the world afraid to sleep, waking again and again with a start, just to memorize his outline against the dream. Was this the last she’d see of him whole? 

Love creeps up on some, peeking through a lattice, a bright eye or an ear or lips, a laugh come and gone, unrecognized until the collection of moments become prized treasure bound up in a name. Micah had needed trust before love could approach. Common ground. And, yes, desire. Not all mortals need all these at first. Some love at first sight. It’s necessary in lives as short as theirs that all kinds of love exist. But the immortal has time to take—though just as many regrets for time not taken sooner.

The next morning she donned her reluctant name and pronouns and dressed in gold again. There were last orders, last rites, and again the Presence without a physical form passed by and whispered without words. Nothing of damnation. Just surety that the war would end the uncertainty.

Six hours before the end, the trumpet sounded, and Micah arrived in lily white with the ranks and a sword bright as lightning—a sword not unlike the swords of hell, forged in hellfire and quenched in holy water, the worst weapon an immortal could design and so designed for the purpose of the worst war there would ever be. Micah as Michael spoke fervently about strength, though that strength would fade, and virtue, though it would come to naught. And she spoke of glory, because it was expected of her; but to every angel watching, their prince seemed sad, and it left them uneasy, marching out to the firmament to gaze down at sapphire earth and wait for the sign of attack, for the end. 

To a fellow archangel her mood seemed doubly strange, and she knew she was followed, and so broke rank, and tried to lose him in the clouds. 

Unexpectedly over London, between the crash of two o’clock chimes from the tower, something wrenched her mind like her skin being torn off. Her wings folded on the reflex. And though it wasn’t a drop from heaven, not even the kind of fall with a capital “F,” she fell and barely caught herself in time to land stunned but otherwise unharmed.

She landed in a park crumpled amid its gardener’s cottage ferns. Humanity was too busy panicking to notice. It was raining impossible precipitation already and the world was going to end soon, but something hurt. Damn everything, something hurt so badly.

Sirens were screaming around a fire in Soho. Swarms of pestilence writhed in the streets. Micah lay still in the bent grasses and uprooted ferns, trying to understand the pain in her chest, then realizing she didn’t want to understand it. She was too frightened to. It must have been an hour, maybe two, before she realized she hadn’t moved and that the pain hadn’t stopped.

She staggered to her feet, left her sword, and pushed her way through the crowds. She spotted a familiar vehicle outside a bar. Her post had been to watch the stray angel, but she’d learned about the demon’s car early on.

Micah dragged herself into the bar and found there, half-drunk, the only other demon not welcoming Armageddon with open arms. He had an open bottle though, and several emptied ones besides.

“Where is he?”

The demon looked up through half-crooked glasses.

“Who?”

She bit back the name. Names were personal. Names gave too much away when they came out of other mouths. “The demon sent to your apartment.”

“Demons,” he corrected.

“What?”

“Demons. Two demons. Blast. I only had enough holy water for one.”

Micah knew she had a soul. She felt it pulling at the threads of her body with those words. There were things that could destroy what immortals were. Rare things, yes, but real. Holy. Things that had made her abandon her sword.

“Who?” Her voice seemed to come from somewhere else.

“Someone,” said the demon at the table, and he growled through a drunken slump, “who killed my angel. Now go and let me follow him.”

“I’d help you.” She had no sword, had left it in the park, but still cut a storm-tossed impressive figure. But the demon only shook his head. 

“End my misery sooner, you mean. Why?”

She couldn’t answer, and if his misery was like hers no sword would do it justice. There was no reason to stay. 

After that, Micah didn’t think. She knew trails, followed scents. She had to know. She had never, despite being raised to fight the Other Side, wished death on anyone. Battle was impersonal. So was the war. It was all for the greater glory, the Almighty making Her power known. And if the whole of Creation was just to that purpose, then you couldn’t really be mad about it, because you couldn’t do anything about it. 

These and other treacherous thoughts flashed through Micah’s mind without the veneer of holiness to check them. She didn’t care anymore. She didn’t care for anything else but one.

She found the bookshop first, where the angel had been holed up for two hundred years as a guardian of the region. It would be more accurate to say she found the remains of it, the sirens and the water hoses, and the rubble they’d salvaged too late. And so from there it was just a matter of directions, of reading mortal minds too distraught to notice. And then she was gone again. Mayfair. Li had said Mayfair. An old town of stone buildings, cobbles, art.

The flat in question was clearly marked by lingering brimstone hovering over it.

*

Let’s talk about memory. Over and over. There is so much to say. Let’s talk about memory. About why you’re making one. It’s because you already know you’ll have to remember. You already know the reminder will be gone. And you already fear every feeling that will well up with that loss. You’re hoarding memories in desperation. It won’t prevent anything. You hope it will pack the wound, stave off the bleeding, stop time. 

It can’t.

There are no whole shapes to grief. Grief is shards. They all cut. There are no gentle gaps. Here the broken door. Here the smoldering ruin. Here the gold of a locket on the floor. Fingers curl and twine in the links of an antique chain. 

Micah screamed. An angel’s scream is not human. It carries to the soul. It doesn’t scatter birds outside. It kills them. It doesn’t vault to the sky. It pulls the clouds down in red rain. Immortals do not wound the way mortals do. Mortals die or heal. Immortals have no such comfort, not without a miracle, not without something divine in the mix, and what god would raise a demon from the dead?

* * *

(6)

_Ad sheyafuach hayom, v'naso hatzalalim. _

*

The other demon’s angel was not truly dead. Merely discorporated. The demons did not reach the shop in time. Nor did the angels sent for judgment. It was a foolish man and a fallen candle flame that sent him away and set every book alight. The two sides were none the wiser.

He made his return in the confusion, and he and the demon sped from different directions towards a ground zero for the Endtimes because they both wanted desperately to stop it.

And in that place, as planned, was a boy of about eleven. With a dog. And he was the good part in all this, because thanks to loss and grief and love, he did not want to End the world.

There are miracles, if you look for them, he thought. All the power in the world, you say? All the power to end it, you say? 

End it, the impoverished armies demand. 

End it, the proud privileged beg. 

Let it be over. 

We’ll blaze in glory and die out in blood and in fire. And we’ll know who’s best. 

You just have to say the word. Start it. Heaven can’t. It must be the son of the demons’ king. Heaven must play the good guy. You have to provoke it, boy. 

(It’s ready to be provoked.) 

Get to it already, boy.

End it now, even the angel screaming the sky red begs, but she hasn’t met the boy, not yet.

The devil is in the details, all but in this one. The devil doesn’t know that this is not how it goes. The devil was never eleven, never had friends, never even had a real dog. No. A child looks at the burning world, at a raging army, at the pretentiousness of adults insisting there are only two sides—adults of adults, immortals, older than anyone, and yet not as wise as a child who, at the cusp of self-awareness, realizes the devil lives for the moments when mortals say the devil made them do it.

And he’s not going to have it. He’s going to have what every child wants when the world is ending. He’s going to have miracles.

The devil will rage and scream and curse, but the boy will never care that he does. To this boy, that devil isn’t his father. His father is the man who will scold him for coming home late, for worrying father and mother sick. No, his father does not have horns. 

The boy decides this, when he decides that the angel is not a ghost, that the car is not ashes, and that the Big One, the End, will only end the war, not the planet, not the people, not his home.

Everyone looking for it will see it. The rest will claim it was a dream. Heaven and hell will rage, but what can they do, with the key piece missing from their plan? The boy is not an angel or a demon, and so he changes everything.

What none will see is how he does it. Being told he has power for just this moment, before disowning the one who abandoned him, he goes everywhere at once, knows everything at once, knows more than a boy of eleven years _ should _ know, but he’s been forced to know it, ever since the hellhound came to heel, ever since his eyes glowed red and the horsemen took up their tokens to ride. Death will tell him off, but Death tells everyone off in the end, so the boy will not care.

He could be bitter, having the weight of the world on his shoulders. But it’s a relief, having the weight of saving it rather than ending it. It would be for any human, if those were the only two choices. (They are.)

The angels and the demons look on in shock, most of them, nearly all of them, not understanding their purpose now. Most mortals never understand their purpose, but they get along fine. But the angels and demons thought there was going to be meaning. They haven’t practiced not knowing things. But they will. They’ll have to. They’ll have to talk at least. They’ll have to find something to talk about besides the war. That’s how it is with people, because if you’re fighting to win, you all lose.

And this is a story about people.

*

Micah kneels by the pond with a sword in hand. The armies of heaven are up there, in the firmament, squaring off against demons with tattered wings. Wings she helped ruin. She’s torn her robes, thrown down her crown, as she did after the Fall in mourning. Again she lies mourning ruin, but far from the throne, now wild and half-bare by the water.

Robbed of any way to die but one.

And this prince who fought the devil once, who was brave because she didn’t know what she had to lose, is trying to get up the courage to fall on her sword. 

Trying and failing, over and over. Is it strange that she’d wonder about life after death? About eternity? If there is a place we all go, a place, not a river of fire and forgetfulness… If there is a place where we go on as people think we do, as the memories carry us… Can she ever arrive there ruined and bloodied? 

She has no choice but to try. 

She just can’t get off her knees, get set up for it. One hand clutches the locket holding the sprig of bright feather. It was immune to holy water. If only she could have given that immunity away. Her knuckles ache. Her fingers turn red. If she can just stop crying… If she can just lift her sword… 

A boy of eleven can’t understand the details, even if the servants of evil dropped all the words into his head. But he understands loss. He knows grief. He’s learned something of love. Of trust. Of need. 

So when he appears to rebuild the bookshop, to park the new-old car, to lower Atlantis into the sea, he also appears and listens to more than the tears and the sobbing. He listens to the memory, then to the worlds beyond the worlds, then to Time itself, and he finds something, and puts it, with great care, more so than any other thing, back in place.

“It would take too long to explain,” he says, in the instant that he’s able to be everywhere, doing everything, which is very hard for a human but not impossible for what he is for just the moment before disowning hell. “So I won’t explain. But I’ve tried to fix it.”

And he’s gone.

Grief is like a landslide, and she has no way of knowing what he means, this boy whose eyes should have been red but are not, who has turned the sky back to blue.

Exhausted, defeated, heartbroken, Micah kneels by the lake with her sword, her other hand’s long pale fingers in the dirt now, clutching a memory, refusing to move, because to move is to be distracted, to let Time resume, and if the world has not ended, she thinks, if there will be more memories, then she won’t stand the thought of them crowding out the precious few she has now.

Then the smell of earth wraps her up. 

“Micah?”

It is the exhaustion that weighs on her so she cannot start. The grief, too, holding her down, because joy has been wounded and hope cannot believe it: A voice low and rolling in her ear, the words like the arms offering shelter.

_ Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. _

_ For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. _(7)

The landlord will live a very long life, and get a hoped-for book someday. There’ll be a show to put on for a little while, but even the other demon and angel know how that will end: In a mock trial, in false miracles, but why should she complain? She’s got a real one. None can gainsay it. 

There will be a story that keeps on going, not about angels and demons, but about people. And that is how it all ends.

By beginning again. 

**Author's Note:**

> All the notes are from my rusty knowledge of reading Hebrew.  
Part (1) Song of Solomon 6:10, 12 _Mi zot ha'nishkafah, k'mo shachar? Lo yada'ti_ – Who is she that looketh forth as the dawn, fair as the moon? I was unaware.  
Pt (2) SoS 7:11 _Ani l'dodi v'ala t'shokato._ – I am my beloved's, and his desire is mine.  
Pt (3) SoS 2:16 _Dodi li v'ani lo._ – My beloved is mine, and I am his.  
Pt (4) Sos 5:16 _Zeh dodi v'zeh rei._ – This is my beloved, and this is my friend.  
Pt (5) SoS 6:3 _Ani l'dodi v'dodi li._ – I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine.  
Pt (6) SoS 4:6 _Ad sheyafuach hayom, v'naso hatzalalim._ – Until the day breathe, and the shadows flee away...  
(7) SoS 2:10, 11  
Note: _I wrote a great deal of this while listening to "Waltz in the Dark" by Matt Nakoa._


End file.
